There was a man who lived on the Cooley bayou who walked on a wooden peg. He had attempted to dynamite a fish-hole. He lighted the fuse of the dynamite stick and walked toward the pool to toss the stick into the water. His wooden peg found a soft place in the earth, and he sank into the mire up to his knees. He pitched forward on his face, the stick of dynamite fell from his hand and rolled just a few feet out of reach. The peg leg was twisted under the sod and marsh-grass in such a way that the unfortunate man could not tear himself loose and escape from the stick of dynamite. The explosion tore a hole in the ground in which a large automobile might have been easily concealed, and friends of the cripple found scraps of him hanging in the trees a hundred yards away. Org and Little Bit arrived just in time to view the effects of the tragedy, and came away with a deep impression of the explosive power of dynamite. “Dat stuff ain’t nothin’ fer us to fool wid, Marse Org,” Little Bit said earnestly. “Jes’ look whut dat little stick of dynamite done to dat big growed-up man. Ef a wad of dynamite wus to bust close to us, de white folks would hab to put on deir readin’ specks to find de pieces, an’ dey’d tote us bofe back to Tickfall on a shingle.” “I know where plenty of blasting powder is,” Org remarked. “Uncle Tom has a whole keg of powder in his barn.” “Dat’s de stuff fer us to monkey wid,” Little Bit agreed. “Us don’t hab to play wid so much at one time dat we git blowed plum’ away.” They found the keg of powder and carried it down to the little branch which ran around the edge of the town. They were very careful as they went around the stable, not to step on the alligator. As they carried their powder away, they looked back frequently to assure themselves that the alligator was not in pursuit. When at last they had reached the woods, they decided that it would be a good idea to make several loud explosions to scare the alligator and keep him from coming in that direction. They spent several hours experimenting with the powder, enjoying themselves in a variety of dangerous ways without coming to any harm. Then Little Bit thought of a hollow log under the wooden bridge that crossed this little branch on the road to the Nigger-Heel plantation. The log was about four feet long, the hollow through the center being about four inches in diameter, and extending nearly the entire length. To the imagination of boys, this thing would be suggestive of a cannon. When Little Bit showed the log to Orren Gaitskill, that was the first thought in his mind. “Let’s put some gunpowder in this log and shoot her off,” he proposed. “It’s just like a cannon.” “Us ain’t got no fuse-hole,” Little Bit remarked. “We can go up to Uncle Tom’s and borrow a auger and bore a fuse-hole,” Org replied. “I know where an auger is.”